Tour Archives
But Don't Hate Her When She Gets Up To Leave
11/6/07 - 12:20 PM - Somewhere over the central United States, en route to Philly
My apologies, dear readers, for the delay in this update. There was much business to be taken care of in the past few days. The last show of the tour was on Saturday in Las Vegas at the Beauty Bar. It was an interesting night to say the least. We played outside behind the venue, which was not a bad space to play. The sound was pretty good onstage and we felt good about our sound despite having to play a somewhat rushed 30-minute set. (Aside: "one more song" is a great thing to hear when it's coming from the audience after you've played your last tune, but it's a bummer when it's coming from the sound guy and you're four songs from finished.) But the folks that had turned up to see The Vermin and Lords of Altimont didn't quite seem to know what to make of us. "That was very... different," was a popular comment after our set. Different from what? one might ask. It sounded the same to me. Still, I got the sense it was meant as a compliment.
After us came The Vermin, whose set was very... different. A red-haired woman joined them onstage after a few songs and began dancing topless while they played and standing awkwardly with her arms over her breasts during the long stretches of talking between their songs. It was like watching a car crash that kept happening over and over, if a car crash could have breasts and a myspace profile. But no one in the audience seemed to be complaining. However, being quite fatigued and having seen breasts before, we decided not to stick around.
The next few days were filled with final preparations, sitting around at Brett's house, and assorted Las Vegas hijinx. Last night Trina dropped by with her daughter Jasmine (our biggest fan besides my girlfriend, Trina had told me, and now I believe her) and we gave them a private living room acoustic performance, which was a lot of fun. After they left, we decided to go out with a bang and hit The Strip. I'd realized after the Beauty Bar show that I had left a small box of CDs at the venue. They weren't just our CDs, though -- the box also had the CDs of all the other bands we'd swapped with over the course of the tour, and I didn't want to let them go. So we parked Van Gogh at the Venetian and decided that we'd wander down The Strip towards Fremont St. to collect the package. We grossly underestimated the distance involved, however. But a little walking never killed anyone, so we found a beer store, purchased pint bottles of Ruination IPA (for one can drink publically on Las Vegas Blvd., a wonderful freedom that really ought to be available in more parts of this ridiculous country), and embarked on a long walking tour of the historic boulevard. It's quite a fascinating journey -- as you move away from The Venetian, The Mirage, The Wynn, (i.e., the big money) and so forth, you begin to pass older, less glitzy casinos, then motels, pawn shops, and strip clubs, then broken and boarded up buildings. It's a transition from decadence to decay, from tourists to denizens, from suggestive to smutty. A taxi driver pulled over and called after us, "So, fellas! You lookin' for a titty bar, or what?" "No thank you sir," we told him, "we have the internet." So, long story short, we got the CDs, heard an awesome funk band at The Beauty Bar that made me feel very white, hopped the fence at the Econo Lodge and loitered by the pool for awhile (or at least we assumed that's what we may have been doing -- loitering strikes me as a rather poorly-defined activity), ate the Denny's appetizer sampler (remember kids, you can't spell "Denny's" without "Deny"), and finally made it safely back to Van Halen and Brett's house. And of course we saw quite a motley assortment of characters along the way, in various states of drunkenness. Las Vegas is an interesting place.
And that's that! Tonight we'll arrive back in Cherry Hill and relax for a few days before going to Pittsburgh (woohoo!) for one last grand finale to the tour. We're quite excited about that. So, to review: this tour wasn't quite what I expected it to be, but these sorts of things never are. The lows may have been low, but the highs were very high, and you can't have the latter without the former (SEE ALSO: polarity principle). The van broke down a bunch of times, we lost a member, we had to cancel two shows, we played some empty rooms, and I broke way too many strings and lost a bunch of capos. But we saw many beautiful new places, played some incredible shows, made lots of new friends, visited old friends, drank a whole lot of free beer, and I got one of my capos back and figured out how to stop breaking strings. (It's all mental, you see. Also I use a lighter pick now.) The award for best show has to go to the Red White and Brew Pub in Redding, CA, but the majority of the shows fell into either the good or the excellent category.
We'd like to extend our utmost gratitude to everyone who came to hear us, and especially to those who danced and hung out and talked to us, and most especially to those who welcomed us into their homes -- thanks Brett, Willy, Grandma and Grandpa Donovan, Exxxteban, Devon and Dawn, PJ, Andrew, Harland and Pete and Rick and all the inhabitants of the Salem House, Ben, Beth, Petrea and Eugene, Melissa and Hiram, Tim and Kim, Patch (even though we never made it), Ira and Clay, and Brett one more time.
We'd also like to show our appreciation to all of the great bands with whom we had the pleasure of sharing the stage, including Devon Williams, Maggie Morris, Wayward Sway, Erin Lizardo, Belda Beast, Boy Elephant, John Tre, The Hummingbirds, Duologue, Acute, The Harvey Girls, The Minor Thirds, Flatpack, Syn Wagon, Coal Beautiere, Something for Rockets, and Low vs. Diamond. We hope to see and hear you again soon.
We don't have any plans to tour again in the immediate future, but we figure things can only keep getting better. Of course, you can always help the cause by telling your friends and relatives about us. What's a better way to let someone know you care about them this holiday season than by giving them the gift of Steve Golderg and the Arch Enemies? In any case, it looks like we'll be settling our base of operations for the time being in the Philadelphia area and branching out a bit from there. Thanks for keeping up with us in this blog, and don't be a stranger. I'd love to know that there's somebody reading this stuff.
Finally, for your convenience, here are links to all of the diary entries from this, the Don't Taze Me Bro West Coast Tour 2007:
#1 - Pre-tour, links to covers and demos
#2 - Las Vegas, first show
#4 - Tucson, hipsters, first breakdown, San Marcos
#5 - San Diego day off, Donald departs
#6 - Hollywood (squares)
#7 - LA continued, San Luis Obispo, California 1
#8 - San Francisco, Chico
#9 - Redding
#10 - Eugene, Dundee, Portland, a cover of February Third
#11 - Seattle, sleeping in the van
Seattle in-studio, more bad tires, Olympia
#12 - Bend, the van dies again
#13 - Back in Eugene, Sacramento, another bad tire
#14 - The Casbah, the van dies again, the long road to Vegas
#15 - Las Vegas Pt. II, conclusion
My apologies, dear readers, for the delay in this update. There was much business to be taken care of in the past few days. The last show of the tour was on Saturday in Las Vegas at the Beauty Bar. It was an interesting night to say the least. We played outside behind the venue, which was not a bad space to play. The sound was pretty good onstage and we felt good about our sound despite having to play a somewhat rushed 30-minute set. (Aside: "one more song" is a great thing to hear when it's coming from the audience after you've played your last tune, but it's a bummer when it's coming from the sound guy and you're four songs from finished.) But the folks that had turned up to see The Vermin and Lords of Altimont didn't quite seem to know what to make of us. "That was very... different," was a popular comment after our set. Different from what? one might ask. It sounded the same to me. Still, I got the sense it was meant as a compliment.
After us came The Vermin, whose set was very... different. A red-haired woman joined them onstage after a few songs and began dancing topless while they played and standing awkwardly with her arms over her breasts during the long stretches of talking between their songs. It was like watching a car crash that kept happening over and over, if a car crash could have breasts and a myspace profile. But no one in the audience seemed to be complaining. However, being quite fatigued and having seen breasts before, we decided not to stick around.
The next few days were filled with final preparations, sitting around at Brett's house, and assorted Las Vegas hijinx. Last night Trina dropped by with her daughter Jasmine (our biggest fan besides my girlfriend, Trina had told me, and now I believe her) and we gave them a private living room acoustic performance, which was a lot of fun. After they left, we decided to go out with a bang and hit The Strip. I'd realized after the Beauty Bar show that I had left a small box of CDs at the venue. They weren't just our CDs, though -- the box also had the CDs of all the other bands we'd swapped with over the course of the tour, and I didn't want to let them go. So we parked Van Gogh at the Venetian and decided that we'd wander down The Strip towards Fremont St. to collect the package. We grossly underestimated the distance involved, however. But a little walking never killed anyone, so we found a beer store, purchased pint bottles of Ruination IPA (for one can drink publically on Las Vegas Blvd., a wonderful freedom that really ought to be available in more parts of this ridiculous country), and embarked on a long walking tour of the historic boulevard. It's quite a fascinating journey -- as you move away from The Venetian, The Mirage, The Wynn, (i.e., the big money) and so forth, you begin to pass older, less glitzy casinos, then motels, pawn shops, and strip clubs, then broken and boarded up buildings. It's a transition from decadence to decay, from tourists to denizens, from suggestive to smutty. A taxi driver pulled over and called after us, "So, fellas! You lookin' for a titty bar, or what?" "No thank you sir," we told him, "we have the internet." So, long story short, we got the CDs, heard an awesome funk band at The Beauty Bar that made me feel very white, hopped the fence at the Econo Lodge and loitered by the pool for awhile (or at least we assumed that's what we may have been doing -- loitering strikes me as a rather poorly-defined activity), ate the Denny's appetizer sampler (remember kids, you can't spell "Denny's" without "Deny"), and finally made it safely back to Van Halen and Brett's house. And of course we saw quite a motley assortment of characters along the way, in various states of drunkenness. Las Vegas is an interesting place.
And that's that! Tonight we'll arrive back in Cherry Hill and relax for a few days before going to Pittsburgh (woohoo!) for one last grand finale to the tour. We're quite excited about that. So, to review: this tour wasn't quite what I expected it to be, but these sorts of things never are. The lows may have been low, but the highs were very high, and you can't have the latter without the former (SEE ALSO: polarity principle). The van broke down a bunch of times, we lost a member, we had to cancel two shows, we played some empty rooms, and I broke way too many strings and lost a bunch of capos. But we saw many beautiful new places, played some incredible shows, made lots of new friends, visited old friends, drank a whole lot of free beer, and I got one of my capos back and figured out how to stop breaking strings. (It's all mental, you see. Also I use a lighter pick now.) The award for best show has to go to the Red White and Brew Pub in Redding, CA, but the majority of the shows fell into either the good or the excellent category.
We'd like to extend our utmost gratitude to everyone who came to hear us, and especially to those who danced and hung out and talked to us, and most especially to those who welcomed us into their homes -- thanks Brett, Willy, Grandma and Grandpa Donovan, Exxxteban, Devon and Dawn, PJ, Andrew, Harland and Pete and Rick and all the inhabitants of the Salem House, Ben, Beth, Petrea and Eugene, Melissa and Hiram, Tim and Kim, Patch (even though we never made it), Ira and Clay, and Brett one more time.
We'd also like to show our appreciation to all of the great bands with whom we had the pleasure of sharing the stage, including Devon Williams, Maggie Morris, Wayward Sway, Erin Lizardo, Belda Beast, Boy Elephant, John Tre, The Hummingbirds, Duologue, Acute, The Harvey Girls, The Minor Thirds, Flatpack, Syn Wagon, Coal Beautiere, Something for Rockets, and Low vs. Diamond. We hope to see and hear you again soon.
We don't have any plans to tour again in the immediate future, but we figure things can only keep getting better. Of course, you can always help the cause by telling your friends and relatives about us. What's a better way to let someone know you care about them this holiday season than by giving them the gift of Steve Golderg and the Arch Enemies? In any case, it looks like we'll be settling our base of operations for the time being in the Philadelphia area and branching out a bit from there. Thanks for keeping up with us in this blog, and don't be a stranger. I'd love to know that there's somebody reading this stuff.
Finally, for your convenience, here are links to all of the diary entries from this, the Don't Taze Me Bro West Coast Tour 2007:
#1 - Pre-tour, links to covers and demos
#2 - Las Vegas, first show
#4 - Tucson, hipsters, first breakdown, San Marcos
#5 - San Diego day off, Donald departs
#6 - Hollywood (squares)
#7 - LA continued, San Luis Obispo, California 1
#8 - San Francisco, Chico
#9 - Redding
#10 - Eugene, Dundee, Portland, a cover of February Third
#11 - Seattle, sleeping in the van
Seattle in-studio, more bad tires, Olympia
#12 - Bend, the van dies again
#13 - Back in Eugene, Sacramento, another bad tire
#14 - The Casbah, the van dies again, the long road to Vegas
#15 - Las Vegas Pt. II, conclusion
Van Helsing's Last Ride
11/2/07 – 6:30 PM – On the road to Vegas
We skipped LA the other night and went straight to San Diego and stayed with Esteban. We rocked The Casbah, and it was a lot of fun. We've been fortunate to have had good sound at many of the venues we've played on this tour. Good sound onstage is often the difference between a fun show and a bummer one. The sound was great last night and we had a great time. There were some funny coincidences – there was a girl in the audience from Cherry Hill, my hometown, and one of the fellows in Something for Rockets attended Goldsmiths College in London, where I spent a semester. There was also the best hospitality we've had on this tour – four drink tickets per band member, with Stone IPA and Arrogant Bastard Ale on tap. Eric and I got drunk and walked up to the 24 hour Mexican food drive through window and got some tasty carne asada tacos. So it was a good night.
What's not good is that Van Halen is having more problems. First all four tires failed, then the alternator and the tensioner, and today we found out that the transmission has failed as well. Right now the vehicle has no third or fourth gear, and the transmission needs to be rebuilt. Short on options, we've decided to make a go of it – we're currently limping to Las Vegas in 2nd gear, averaging about 45 MPH. It's going to take a long time, but fortunately time is on our side. Tomorrow night is our last show, and I'll be damned if we're going to cancel it. Let's just hope it doesn't explode before we get to Vegas.
11/3/07 - Brett's place - Las Vegas
We made it! And it only took 11 hours. We saw some beautiful stars on some desolate back roads. It feels really good to have made it back. Tonight's the big last show of the tour. We're ready.
We skipped LA the other night and went straight to San Diego and stayed with Esteban. We rocked The Casbah, and it was a lot of fun. We've been fortunate to have had good sound at many of the venues we've played on this tour. Good sound onstage is often the difference between a fun show and a bummer one. The sound was great last night and we had a great time. There were some funny coincidences – there was a girl in the audience from Cherry Hill, my hometown, and one of the fellows in Something for Rockets attended Goldsmiths College in London, where I spent a semester. There was also the best hospitality we've had on this tour – four drink tickets per band member, with Stone IPA and Arrogant Bastard Ale on tap. Eric and I got drunk and walked up to the 24 hour Mexican food drive through window and got some tasty carne asada tacos. So it was a good night.
What's not good is that Van Halen is having more problems. First all four tires failed, then the alternator and the tensioner, and today we found out that the transmission has failed as well. Right now the vehicle has no third or fourth gear, and the transmission needs to be rebuilt. Short on options, we've decided to make a go of it – we're currently limping to Las Vegas in 2nd gear, averaging about 45 MPH. It's going to take a long time, but fortunately time is on our side. Tomorrow night is our last show, and I'll be damned if we're going to cancel it. Let's just hope it doesn't explode before we get to Vegas.
11/3/07 - Brett's place - Las Vegas
We made it! And it only took 11 hours. We saw some beautiful stars on some desolate back roads. It feels really good to have made it back. Tonight's the big last show of the tour. We're ready.
Van Helsing Rides Again
10/30/07 – 3:45 PM – On the road to Sacramento
That's right, Van Occupanther is back on the road. Turns out the alternator and the tensioner had given out. We missed our show in Arcata, which was a big disappointment because we'd really been looking forward to it, but there was nothing we could do. But now, a 7-hour round trip and a whole bunch of money later, Ludwig Van is back from the dead and carrying us to our next destination.
We made the best of our unexpected day off by hanging out with Beth in Eugene. We saw Once at the $1.50 theater. It had some great music in it, and you can't beat that price. We went to the mushroom festival and looked at pretty scenery and drank fresh apple cider. And of course we ate some tasty meals.
Tonight is the third to last show of the tour. It feels like we've been out here for awhile, but at the same time I'm surprised that we're almost at the end already. Perhaps that's because the preparation for the tour took more than three times as long as the tour itself. I admit that I'm tired of driving all the time, tired of sleeping on couches, tired of being tired – but I don't feel ready to settle back in at home. Being on tour means always having a purpose, always having a goal – get to the next city, play the next show. But it also means never knowing what's going to happen, who you're going to meet, what tomorrow's scenery will look like. I like that about it. But I do miss my dog and my bed.
10/31/07 – 12:00 PM – On the road to LA
Last night in Sacramento was lots of fun. The Press Club is a great little room with excellent sound. Coal Beautiere, a piano and bass duo, were first. They have a great way with a minor key and a triple meter. Art, the bassist, did some excellent multitasking, including holding down a drone on a miniature organ with his foot while playing bass. He and the singer/pianist, Adrian, were both talented and cool. Hearing good new bands and trading CDs with them is another fun perk of touring. These aren't just the best shows that I've played in awhile, but the best shows I've attended.
We played second, and the audience was great. They stood close to us and danced and had lots of moxy. I like that in an audience. Clay and Ira, who put the show together, were kind enough to put us up for the evening. I walked into their place and heard Neon Golden by The Notwist and I thought to myself, “Sweet.”
7:40 PM – Still on the road to LA
We blew out a tire on I-5 today. We've now purchased five new tires for Van Gogh in the course of a three-week tour. Sigh. In any case, we have two shows left out here. Tomorrow's the big Casbah show in San Diego. We're pumped.
That's right, Van Occupanther is back on the road. Turns out the alternator and the tensioner had given out. We missed our show in Arcata, which was a big disappointment because we'd really been looking forward to it, but there was nothing we could do. But now, a 7-hour round trip and a whole bunch of money later, Ludwig Van is back from the dead and carrying us to our next destination.
We made the best of our unexpected day off by hanging out with Beth in Eugene. We saw Once at the $1.50 theater. It had some great music in it, and you can't beat that price. We went to the mushroom festival and looked at pretty scenery and drank fresh apple cider. And of course we ate some tasty meals.
Tonight is the third to last show of the tour. It feels like we've been out here for awhile, but at the same time I'm surprised that we're almost at the end already. Perhaps that's because the preparation for the tour took more than three times as long as the tour itself. I admit that I'm tired of driving all the time, tired of sleeping on couches, tired of being tired – but I don't feel ready to settle back in at home. Being on tour means always having a purpose, always having a goal – get to the next city, play the next show. But it also means never knowing what's going to happen, who you're going to meet, what tomorrow's scenery will look like. I like that about it. But I do miss my dog and my bed.
10/31/07 – 12:00 PM – On the road to LA
Last night in Sacramento was lots of fun. The Press Club is a great little room with excellent sound. Coal Beautiere, a piano and bass duo, were first. They have a great way with a minor key and a triple meter. Art, the bassist, did some excellent multitasking, including holding down a drone on a miniature organ with his foot while playing bass. He and the singer/pianist, Adrian, were both talented and cool. Hearing good new bands and trading CDs with them is another fun perk of touring. These aren't just the best shows that I've played in awhile, but the best shows I've attended.
We played second, and the audience was great. They stood close to us and danced and had lots of moxy. I like that in an audience. Clay and Ira, who put the show together, were kind enough to put us up for the evening. I walked into their place and heard Neon Golden by The Notwist and I thought to myself, “Sweet.”
7:40 PM – Still on the road to LA
We blew out a tire on I-5 today. We've now purchased five new tires for Van Gogh in the course of a three-week tour. Sigh. In any case, we have two shows left out here. Tomorrow's the big Casbah show in San Diego. We're pumped.